


that heaven finds means to kill your joys with love

by MercutioLives



Category: Romeo And Juliet - All Media Types, Romeo And Juliet - Shakespeare
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Brothers, Car Accidents, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hospitals, Loss of Parent(s), Parent-Child Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-21
Updated: 2015-11-21
Packaged: 2018-05-02 17:43:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5257730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercutioLives/pseuds/MercutioLives
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"Becoming an orphan, as it happens, is not at all like a lightning strike."</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	that heaven finds means to kill your joys with love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [talefeathers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/talefeathers/gifts).



> This came from a response to a [tumblr prompt](http://oflaurens.tumblr.com/post/133615422830/mercutio-and-valentiiiiiiiiiiiine-do-i-even-have) for a three-sentence fic from my tiny sis Julia (talefeathers on AO3, overthedogparkwall on tumblr). I liked the concept so much that I decided to expand upon it. There's no specific "version" of the characters intended for this, apart from the AU canon Julia and I play around with.

It's nothing either of them ever expected to happen again in their lifetime. A thing that neither of them had prepared for, because they had believed - mistakenly, as it turns out - that such things were like a lightning strike: never twice in the same place. Mercutio is the first to get the call, because he's twenty years old, as if being twenty automatically makes one capable of dealing with phone calls saying that one's legal guardian has been involved in an accident. It sounds like such an innocuous word: accident. Certainly not something that can snatch away a life within seconds, certainly not something that can leave someone an orphan for the second time. Words are funny like that. Mercutio has always been good with words, but he can't understand how such a benign-seeming word can carry with it so much heaviness and pain. (Accidents are not things that ruin lives, he thinks. Accidents are when a toddler doesn't make it to the bathroom, or when you drop a plate of food on the way to the table. Accidents aren't cars breaking bodies.)

Mercutio's boss lets him go without a question, and when he arrives, his uncle is still alive, by the grace of machines pumping oxygen and drugs into his body. Massimo della Scala always seemed large to Mercutio: a broad-shouldered man, tall, capable of carrying the weight of the world and shielding his nephews from its harshness - but now, he seems thin, frail, drained of all the things that made him so impressive a figure in the mind of a mistrustful, broken-hearted boy. It makes Mercutio's stomach turn. He barely hears the doctor at first, explaining that his uncle sustained severe cranial trauma and that, if he wakes up at all, brain damage is likely. The words float by his ears, registering numbly, without much meaning. He stands there unmoving, as still as the broken man in the bed just a foot or so away; his breathing automatically slows into sync with the oxygen being forced into his uncle's lungs.

The doctor informs him now that, because he's the next-of-kin, and because he is twenty (though the term he uses is "legal adult"), Mercutio can decide whether to keep his uncle on life support in case he should wake, or to turn it off and allow him to die peacefully. (Twenty is old enough to decide whether a man lives or dies. A man who is like a father to him, after his own father left this world far too early. Becoming an orphan, as it happens, is not at all like a lightning strike. As long as one has a parent, one can lose that parent. And it hurts just as much every time. A lightning strike without an exit wound.) Mercutio hasn't even begun to consider the options, but papers are placed into his hands, with the suggestion that he read and think it over. His hands close around the papers automatically; he doesn't think about taking them, just does it because that is what he's supposed to do.

The doctor is gone moments later, and Mercutio sinks into the chair and watches his uncle breathe. The hiss of the oxygen drowns out every other sound, even the ticking of the clock, so he doesn't know how long he sits there. Minutes or hours, but in the end it makes no difference. In the end, he doesn't have to decide, because there's a sound that rises above the oxygen hiss: a single, constant whine. Who knew that death could sound so annoying?

Minutes or hours later, the room is busy with people. It takes some time for Mercutio to realize that they are trying to resuscitate his uncle, but the long, annoying death-whine never ceases. It doesn't matter, and the sound stops when the monitors are unhooked. His uncle is no longer lying there: now it's a shape covered by a sheet. Mercutio blinks slowly and looks up at the clock, only to realize that he doesn't know what time he arrived. His first intentional thought is that he has to call Valentine. His little brother is still in school, but he can't wait until it's over. Val would never forgive him if he did.

– – – –

The soles of Valentine’s sneakers squeak obscenely across the hospital linoleum as he skids to a stop. He’d gotten a call, and run the whole way from school without a thought for the trouble he knew he’d be in. After all, the call had gone through the office: they had called him down and handed him the phone. A voice he just barely recognized as his brother's was on the other end, and before Valentine could think twice, he was running. Now, he's not running: he's standing in the middle of a hospital hallway, shaking from head to foot. Mercutio is sitting in an uncomfortable-looking chair in front of a closed door; his eyes are red and puffy when he lifts his head, his voice cracks when he speaks. Valentine dreads what he knows he will hear. He doesn't want to hear it, but his ears give him no choice in the matter.

"It's just you and me now, kiddo." Valentine is seventeen, Mercutio is twenty; neither of them are old enough to be alone. Unlike his brother, whose perpetually-moving form had been rendered inert at the sight of their uncle, Val moves immediately. He walks up to Mercutio and promptly crumples to the floor, his head finding his brother's lap in the same motion. The sound of his sobs echo off the walls, which are no stranger to such noise. Mercutio's hands are on him: one around his shoulders, the other moving through his hair. He isn't shushing him or whispering reassurances, because there are none: they are alone in the world, orphans at an age both too old and too young, and all they can do is cling to one another like liferafts. No one bothers them or tells Valentine to be quiet, so he doesn't try. Mercutio is silent, and tears don't fall (Val knows he's saving them for when he doesn't need to give comfort) but his hands are shaking as they hold him.

They stay at the hospital a little while longer, because there's paperwork to be done. Arrangements to be made. Mercutio takes care of them all, while Valentine sits in a chair nursing a can of soda from the hospital vending machine and trying not to listen. Hospital staff offer condolences, and while Mercutio replies appropriately, Valentine is silent. He hears the insincerity in his brother's voice, and the exhaustion. He wants to go home. They both do, even though what they're going back to is an empty house with more space than they know what to do with. Even though one person should not have made much difference in terms of all that space - dozens of rooms that are never used, except for when their uncle is ( _was_ ) hosting out-of-town guests, and now never will be - the difference now feels monumental. As children, they had been awed by such an abundance of space, and now they both dread it. Space means emptiness: an outward manifestation of their loss.

It's not something they'd ever thought to prepare for.

 


End file.
